eldavojohn writes: Pamela Jones (PJ) at Groklaw is recounting a buried history lesson on why Microsoft should strive to be more interoperable. Her evidence is a more than humorous email exchange (2002) between none other than Bill Gates, his minions and Intel representatives in which Gates is trying to coax Intel off of Linux — the solution they've already chosen to satisfy their needs. The problem is that Intel finds Linux too damn interoperable which sets it ahead of Windows. Internally Gates writes, 'Where are we on this Jihad? Do I need to be calling and emailing Ottelini to get this back on track?? Every day that goes by is a bad one for us on this. Despite the difficulty we need to draw the line in the sand on this one for a lot of reasons.' I guess eight years later not a whole lot has changed. As PJ notes in summary, Microsoft essentially courted Intel and held their hand to making changes to Windows just to bring it up to 'acceptable' for their compatibility needs. Intel would have been working for Microsoft by giving them the requirements people needed for interoperability. All of this specifically to get Intel off of Linux and back into Microsoft's pocket. If Intel had gone with Windows you'd have to be questioning the business sense of open source versus being nickeled and dimed forever.Link to Original Source